Tuesday, April 24, 2012

ATC update: Montclair ATC to start growing marijuana. Department of Health and Senior Services DHSS) released a list of registered physicians on 4/16. Egg Harbor ATC still has not received permit to grow. Camden update, lawsuit pending against Zoning Board.

On April 4, NORML NJ attorneys William Buckman and Anne Davis filed a lawsuit on behalf of a New Jersey medical patient who would qualify for cannabis access. Named in the suit are the DHSS Commissioner Mary O’Dowd and the newly appointed director of the Medicinal Marijuana Program John O’Brien. CMMNJ is not part of the lawsuit, but see CMMNJ's response (below).

Upcoming events: Million Marijuana March, May 5, 2012 (coming to a city near you.) CMMNJ in NYC.
NORML NJ meeting at 7 pm on May 14 at the Ale House, New Brunswick, NJ.
Seventh National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, 4/26-28/12, Tucson, AZ.

Treasury report: Checking: $2672; PayPal: $3339.

CMMNJ meetings are the second Tuesday of each month from 7 - 9 PM at the Lawrence Twp. Library, 2751 Brunswick Pike, Lawrence Twp., Tel. #609.882.9246. All are welcome. Snacks are served. (Meeting at the library does not imply their endorsement of our issue.) For more info, contact:

Judiciary Committee approves SCR89 (Resolution to Free John Wilson), but measure falls one vote short in full Senate vote on 3/15/12. New book suggestion for NJ Legislature: “Profiles in Cowardice.” Governor Christie inappropriately questioned John Wilson’s diagnosis.

Update of ongoing efforts in D.C re: medical marijuana trial for veterans with PTSD. Why are our soldiers less important than Israeli Defense Forces who get access to this? Feds continue to block studies.

There is no question that Governor Chris Christie has done, and continues to do, irreparable harm to the most vulnerable patients in New Jersey by his unwillingness to implement the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act (Act).

This Act passed into law over two years ago and yet not a single patient has even received an ID card to identify them as a qualifying patient, and not a single Alternative Treatment Center (ATC) has yet received a permit to operate.

The New Jersey Hospice Foundation estimates that there are 35,000 hospice patients currently living in this state. These patients all have a diagnosis of six months or less to live and all these patients automatically qualify for medical marijuana under the terms of the Act. In the past two years then, 140,000 hospice patients have died without the pain relief and quality of life improvement that only medical marijuana could bring to them. Not a single one of these patients was able to legally obtain medical marijuana.

These 140,000 patients were needlessly and irredeemably harmed by the Christie administration and patients continue to be harmed every day.

The Coalition for Medical Marijuana—New Jersey (CMMNJ) is not a part of the lawsuit being filed on behalf of patients in this state, and we see lawsuits as a last resort. Nevertheless, we support any method that will bring about a prompt and meaningful implementation of the Medicinal Marijuana Program in New Jersey. We certainly understand the motivation behind this lawsuit.

CMMNJ has tried talking to Chris Christie. I personally confronted the governor at a Town Hall meeting in Ewing Township shortly after the proposed regulations (regs) were published by the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) in Oct., 2010. I asked the governor if we could not get his cooperation in modifying these regs so that they would result in a workable program. The governor said no, the regs would stay the way they were.

During the public comment period for these regs, numerous patients, advocates and ATC operators implored the DHSS to make the regs to enact this law more reasonable, but when the final regs were adopted, there was not a single change to the 100-plus pages of DHSS regs.

The Christie administration has engaged in, and attempted to engage in, inexcusable obstruction of this law. The governor tried to implement a different law than the one that passed on two occasions—he tried to get Rutgers University to be the sole producer of medical marijuana in New Jersey and when they refused, he tried to limit the ATCs to only two centers instead of the six that the law called for. The entire state legislature rebelled and condemned his regs as not consistent with the legislative intent.

The governor has put one roadblock after another in front of this law—a law he said he does not agree with. Nevertheless, the governor took an oath to uphold the laws of the state of New Jersey and CMMNJ believes he is not being true to his oath when it comes to the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act.

Ken and Jim at Redbank Fundraiser

About The Coalition

Coalition members hold diverse opinions, but we all agree:

Arresting patients is wrong, and it must stop now.

Modern clinical research, centuries of experience and the impassioned personal accounts of thousands of real patients concur: Marijuana can alleviate symptoms of certain serious medical conditions, and it can do so when other drugs fail to help.

Doctors should be free to recommend this medicine to promote health, and sick or injured New Jerseyans should be free to use it responsibly.

The safety margin for therapeutic marijuana is as wide as it can be ─there is no known lethal dose.

New Jersey healthcare professionals dispense potentially lethal drugs every day. We trust them to do so very carefully, and solely to benefit their patients. Common sense and compassion demand that doctors should control non-lethal marijuana medicine for those who truly need it. To make this important change a reality, your voice is needed.

The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was introduced in the State Senate in January 2005 by Senator Nicholas Scutari (D-Linden). A companion bill is pending in the Assembly, sponsored by Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) and Assemblyman Michael Carroll (R-Morris Township).